Description

"---his signature, too!"

Little Joe 2 (Mercury): Original Air Force Photo of Sam "Signed"
with His Paw Prints. A true Space pioneer, Rhesus monkey Sam
was the first animal launched during Project Mercury, from Wallops
Island, Virginia, on December 4, 1959 (an event attended by Mercury
astronauts Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom). Offered here is an 8" x
10" heavyweight matte-finish B&W facial close-up photo possibly
taken during flight with his black ink paw prints at lower left. On
the verso is stamped: "SAM/ Official Air Force Photo/ By: Sam
Photography/ Brooks Air Force Base, Texas/ File 1682GC Date
10 Dec. 59". Sam's name was an acronym for the U.S. Air
Force's School of Aviation Medicine at Brooks
AFB in Texas, of which Major General Otis Otto Benson Jr. was
commander. It was Benson who sent this photo to the original
recipient along with a handwritten note dated March 3, 1961,
reading as follows: "Here is Sam on his/ celebrated flight into
Space/ and down the Atlantic missile/ range --- his signature,
too!/ Kindest regards/ Otis O. Benson, Jr". The original
hand-addressed 12" x 10" envelope of transmittal, with a March 4,
1961, Randolph AFB cancel and Major General Benson's address label,
is included. Also included with the lot is a copy of General
Benson's official Air Force biography. We offer this
well-documented photo to a discerning space collector and historian
who recognizes its rarity and importance. Photo exhibits just a bit
of the expected light silvering and a minor paperclip indentation
but is very fine overall; the note is extremely fine.

Little Joe was an unmanned solid-fueled booster rocket used as an
inexpensive substitute for the Atlas and Redstone vehicles during
the testing phase of the Mercury launch escape system and heat
shield. There were eight launches in the 1959-1960 time period.
Little Joe-2 was the fourth of these test flights and the first
with an animal aboard; an important matter was how weightlessness
might affect Sam and therefore, the future human astronauts. Sam
was housed in a cylindrical capsule inside a Mercury boilerplate
capsule atop the Little Joe rocket. The mission lasted 11 minutes
and 6 seconds, travelling 194 miles and reaching an altitude of 53
miles, close to the edge of space. The capsule and its "monkeynaut"
successfully survived the high-altitude abort sequence and splashed
down in the Atlantic where the U.S.S. Borie recovered it.
Sam suffered no ill effects from his journey and returned to the
colony where he trained, living until November 1982. For more
information on this flight, please view this lot on our website.

More Information:

This New Ocean: A History of Project Mercury

By Loyd S. Swenson Jr., James M. Grimwood, and Charles C. Alexander

Published as NASA Special Publication-4201 in the NASA History Series, 1989.

From pages 211-212:

After the disappointment of Little Joe 1-A, Donlan, Bland, and Piland decided to pull out the stops on Little Joe 2 and allow the aeromedical specialists to run all the experiments they wanted on a high-powered flight. The School of Aviation Medicine had made ready a biological package for its primate passenger, a small rhesus monkey named "Sam," after his alma mater. In addition to Sam's special capsule for rocket flight, the military physicians now prepared barley seeds, rat nerve cells, neurospora, tissue cultures, and insect packets to measure the effects of primary radiation, changes in appearance and capacity for reproduction, and ova and larvae responses to the space environment.

Little Joe 2 promised to be a spectacular flight if everything went as planned. The engineers could see how the capsule escape system would function under conditions of high mach number and low dynamic pressure; more important technically, they could measure the motions, aerodynamic loads, and aerodynamic heating experience of the capsule entering from the intermediate height of about 70 miles. The Air Force medical specialists might also learn about other things, but their chief interest was to see how well Sam himself would withstand weightlessness during the trip. This was also the chief interest of Alan B. Shepard and Virgil I. Grissom, who came to see this launch.

On December 4, 1959, just before noon, the third Little Joe, LJ-2, ripped through the air under full power and burned out at an altitude of 100,000 feet. The tower and capsule separated as planned and the escape rocket gave an additional boost, throwing the capsule into a coasting trajectory that reached its zenith just short of 280,000 feet, or 53 miles. This peak height was about 100,000 feet lower than expected because of a serious windage error, so Sam experienced only three minutes of weightlessness instead of four. He survived the mild reentry, the not-so-mild impact, and six hours of confinement before he was recovered by a destroyer and liberated from his inner envelope.

All preliminary indications reflected a highly successful flight. For the first time Little Joe had achieved full success on all three orders of its programmed test objectives.

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